"A WORKING GESTALT PERSPECTIVE" &
"Seven Phases of Personal Change"
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A WORKING GESTALT PERSPECTIVE
© '93 Chris PringerThis gestalt perspective sees life as like a jigsaw puzzle. Each being has or is one's own gestalt puzzle, and all life composes the universal gestalt puzzle. It helps me to see this as a 3-dimensional globe of innumerable beings all connected by a latticework or web of the love of God. Each of the pieces of the puzzle has a place in its puzzle, whether it is part of an individual's puzzle or a whole being in the universal puzzle. Each piece is connected to every other piece, to one degree or another. This says that Purpose and Connectedness are given realities -- they are constants -- no matter how distorted or dis-connected a piece appears in its current position.
An experience is one piece of a gestalt puzzle. Thoughts, feelings, and beliefs about result from that experience. These are subsidiary or associated pieces. All pieces of the puzzle are connected and have a role to play, even if a piece is invisible from one's current perspective. Actually, invisibility would just be one of the roles of that piece, at that time. Every existing aspect plays an evolving role in this light -- in an evolving gestalt universe.
Let's take an example in which a piece of the Universal Gestalt puzzle, a member of the human race, appears totally unacceptable (to self and/or others). S/he may feel/appear that way when not in his/her "final" place. Still, s/he has a role to play and may use "coping mechanisms" and related strategies in the current position and process. The present state creates challenge and motivation leading to change that is also essential to the overall assembly of the puzzle. How s/he got "out of place" is history that can be used to learn - and teach. Even the non-repeatable can be appreciated (only in retrospect) due to some learning, the timing of which turned out to be critical for a subsequent development. When we appreciate the temporary states, the "piece" (or person) which appears distorted in the previous context (associated only with "negative" experience and feelings), finds more and more fitting places in the puzzle. This is one of the gifts of doing the process. Also, other pieces it was next to, other persons in one's relationship, thus find more connected and useful places and roles - eventually also with fewer and fewer coping mechanisms.
Put in personal growth terms, a person may feel dis-connected and without a role -- separated from love and acceptance. It's sometimes easy to feel that some parts of us -- certain recurring thoughts or feelings -- just don't belong inside of us. In that case it's not uncommon to want to separate such parts from ourselves -- to dis-own them. Feeling separate results from feeling judged -- by self and/or others, consciously or unconsciously -- as unwanted, undeserving, not enough, etc. Just having this experience creates pain (or makes one aware of previously unconscious pain), and we may believe at the time that cutting out the thought or feeling will heal the condition. Thence, pain is one experience (or part of an experience) that we may not want to believe has a place in the gestalt puzzle. Pain does result from feeling separated from one's source of love and acceptance - and/or whom one feels is that source. Since (at least some would say) we often are not conscious of the true source, let alone of where the pain is actually coming from. The *core* of the pain may have originated in his/her infancy, when the child first felt cut-off from his/her parents' needed attention, then reinforced in certain kinds of recurring situations through life.
The belief that "everthing has its place in the world" is probably the basis for Gestalt Psychology. Among other things, that says that a newborn baby seeks only to love and be loved. That is its total underlying intention and motivation for coming into and staying in the world. I do not believe in the idea that "underneath all the stuff of a person is a sinful being that needs to be forced into submission by a vengeful God and his fearful servants." I do believe that all we have ever experienced has a purpose in our lives, regardless of how little we would want some of it repeated by anyone.
In the Eastern metaphysical perspective, because we are all a work in progress and all souls eventually come to total oneness of All That Is, we are all perfect in spite of the out-of-place pieces, not just because or when the pieces are in their final places. Having said something which can be most difficult to understand by the average western -trained mind, I will add that in this perspective, each soul is *responsible* for his/her own growth, redemption, evolution, and ever-increasing the opening to God for the capacity and assistance to do that -- over however many thousands of lifetimes and hardtimes it takes to do that. Hence, The principles of "... no free lunch," "earn your learning," and "infinite compassion" all apply here more than in any other cosmology I know of. And when is "final", if we are designed for self-realization and if there is always more to realize outside our existing perspective??? A related perspective is offered in "A Concept of Health & Healing for the Whole Being"
What's really beautiful about the gestalt puzzle, is that there are pieces of the puzzle (people) that provide for the assessment and rearrangement (transformation) of the puzzle. The increasing realization of acuity, depth, and breadth -- which includes compassion -- in viewing one's life-puzzle goes along with the successful overall management (and evolution) of the puzzle. This tells me that we were designed to be self-realizing, which means that we had to begin relatively un-self-realized. That we, as a microcosm of the macrocosm, are designed to grow and learn. That therefore, our being less than perfect from any perspective is *a point of view.* In other words, from the perspective of the Gestalt, the *process* - that includes the above mentioned coping mechanisms, challenges, and gifts - is part of the plan of the universal gestalt puzzle. This perspective is elaborated in a much more technical application in "The Body Pattern Assessment/Reading and Understanding the Pattern Triad."
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Seven Phases of Personal Change
© '93 Chris Pringer
The process of personal change can be seen to evolve through seven phases. This can apply to one's personality improvement program, to criminal rehabilitation, to general (psycho-social) evolution of a society, or to one's spiritual growth; to a slightly noticed mannerism in our dealing with others or to a habit that could destroy our quality of life. The time it takes to go through the different phases varies. Depending on the kind and depth of change desired and on many other factors, the phases can take seconds or lifetimes. For the most part this essay regards those that are personally notable and memorable.
In Phase 1 we exhibit a negative behavior pattern without consciously realizing the behavior is non-beneficial. In Phase 2 we begin to notice after the fact, perhaps in response to correction or even retaliation by others, that the behavior may be non-beneficial, but continue doing it anyway.
In Phase 3 we come, for the first time, to actually desire to change the behavior, yet find we still keep doing the same thing. There still is not the conscious awareness of the full implications of the behavior, nor a noticeable degree of remorse, until after the action. In Phase 2, no guilt is felt at all.
In Phase 4 we are aware of the non-beneficence of the pattern and even the remorse, or at least guilt, during the behavior itself. We now have realized that the behavior is a habit if not an addiction. Also during the behavior we may feel considerable frustration and anger at self for continuing the habit, and may even wonder why we are still doing it. About this time we begin to assimilate the information necessary to redesign new patterns.
In Phase 5 we make a decision to implement change of some sort, although we may not know exactly what that will look like. We begin to effect behavior change although it would seem parts of self are also trying to continue the pattern.
In Phase 6 we finally exercise full awareness just before we would otherwise begin the behavior and successfully engage a new behavior pattern. The new behavior may continue to develop depending on various factors, and especially if one is motivated to help others in relation to that same kind of pattern. This is not to say that all those who attempt to or actually do help others with a personally experienced pattern have fully changed their own behavior.
Phase 7 only occurs once one is consciously on a spiritual path - regardless of which path or if the path has a formal name. Phase 7 can overlap any of the preceding four phases (3 - 6) and involves the guilt and judgment process. Not all guilt and judgment is born out of spiritual paths, of course. It wouldn't be a simple analysis (even if, by chance, useful) to try to determine which parental rules were in alignment with our Soul's guidance, and which were somehow willy-nilly pushing us in the same direction in spite of their design. Eventually the guilt and judgment cease to be needed as motivators, and become behaviors to drop.
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